Why is Mazuri so popular, I don't get it.

[turtlesteve]

Bob was that way too...he was this big rock with a sorrowful look that said...warm water on it plzzzz.
My objection to Mazuri came when I used to head-start hatchlings for my sister. I'd get them clutch's at a time, when I lived in Calif. I'd get California desert torts and Sulcata...10 to 24 or so. Because I live in snow country now, just Sulcata, in comes Bob...Bob would mostly be stuck in his shed and couldn't graze, so the Safeway provided me with free cuttings, leafy stuff...I hunted my neighborhood for weeds...hay... and at the start of winter I'd get a 40 lb bag of Mazuri. for Bob. On this one clutch I noticed a few of the hatchling babies weren't eating as well as I thought they should...and they weren't gaining weight. So one day as I was feeding Bob a light bulb went off in my head!!! Taaa Daaa. So I took Spring mix...dandelion leaves and flowers...and warm softened Mazuri...all mixed together...and from the very beginning those hatchlings and untold numbers after them, all would eat the Mazuri and leave the greens. So while I may look dumb...I'm not. I stopped using Mazuri for anybody but Bob...kept all the heat and humidity stuff correct, and took great looking healthy yearlings to her. This repeats itself until I stopped adding Mazuri. I'm thinkin because each nugget was covered in molasses, sweet, that's why...I tried'em...sweet and yet nasty...but that was just my personal experience...

Easy fix for this. Just don’t offer mazuri every day. Instead of mixing a variety in every meal, I feed one or two items at a time, sometimes twice a day, and rotate foods constantly. If you offer a mix, the first one to the food will always pick out all the good stuff, be it mazuri, hibiscus, whatever... They are much less likely to turn down a whole meal.

 

[jsheffield]

I often feed mazuri as a dressing on other foods, with enough water added to render it into a porridge.

Jamie

 

[Kapidolo Farms]

ZooMed Grassland and Forest are better products, they cost a bit more. BETTER in nutrient profile, better in ingredient inclusion/exclusion, and have a better fiber profile, this is all quantifiable.

If your interested in a food with 80 years of a proven track record try Purina Mills organic chicken layer crumbles. It has the same basic ingredients of Mazuri (old style, not LS), but no added sugar, and it has enough calcium and D3 to support a chicken to lay an egg everyday. I've talked about all this so much. Read my blog, the one linked to the webpage at the bottom of this entry. If after that, you have a question I'll do my best to answer. If your question demonstrates you did not read the blog, I might not answer.

We can’t get Pre Alpine in the U.S. so we aren’t going to be able to give a true comparison. It does look better to me—longer fibers and less sugar—but I don’t own enough tortoises to judge one over the other and in my climate I don’t need any supplements at all.

We do have a very experienced breeder here, Will at @Kapidolo Farms, who feed only ZooMed, but I don’t think he gets into the Mazuri vs. ZooMed conversation, at least not that I’ve noticed.

 

[lxsnmls]

UPDATE ON ZOOMED GRASSLAND DIET AND DESERT TORT TERRY TORTELLI:

FIRST DAY: soaked and offered alone (curious as to his initial reaction)... turned up his nose and walked away
SECOND DAY: soaked, crumbled and mixed a little in his leaf/etc salad... gobbled everything up
THIRD DAY: soaked, crumbled and mixed a lot more in his leaf/etc salad... gobbled everything up
FOURTH DAY: soaked enough to soften but still hold it’s shape and put chunks on top of his salad... gobbled chunks first
FIFTH DAY: just for fun, offered it alone again and he gobbled it up!

I'm really happy that he’ll eat it alone in a pinch, and/or as a supplement to his diet until I get his habitat filled with a bigger variety of tort-friendly plants to ensure he’s getting everything he needs. The diet smells WONDERFUL, has great ingredients with no added sugar or molasses or soy, and a lot of vitamins/etc that he might not otherwise get in captivity/out of the wild... I’M SOLD

 

[Chubbs the tegu]

Why is mazuri so popular? Tbh, I don't get it. The way to read an ingredients list is, the ingredient mentioned first, is what the product contains most of. Then the seccond etc etc.


I have a horse and horses and herbivore tortoises are very similar when it comes to feeding. You see the same type of stuff in horsefeed, super popular but ingredients wise very mediocre.
My horse has a serious chronic illness and feeding certain ingredients like corn, molasses, soy/hulls etc make it worse. So a long time ago (horse is 24 now) I had to do some serious research in horsefood and ingredients.


To me the ingredients are not great. Mazuri LS is a bit better because it at least contains timothy hay as the biggest ingredient, but still, mediocre in my opnion. Mazuri TD's biggest ingredient is soybean hulls, so the shell of a soybean? then corn, soymeal, wheat midds, molasses (=sugar/syrup) etc.
To me that is not great.


Sure it contains fiber, quite low protein. Cat and dog hair also contains lots of fiber? or chicken feathers. I think they both contain very low quality ingredients, 1 more than the other.


My horse, the previous tort (past away in his 90's), and my current tort, all eat the same stuff: Pre Alpin. The company is German (I'm Dutch, so their neighbor?) and they make natural horse, rodents, tortoise and other livestock foods.
The horse/tortoise one is exactly the same:meadow grasses, herbs, flowers, weeds from the Alps. Zoomed tortoise grasslands comes the closest to Pre Alpin I think. Yes the majority of my horses diet is hay/grass/weeds and the torts weeds/leafy greens etc, but the Pre Alpin is a nice completion of the diet.


You see this in alot of tortoise foods. I looked at Komodo cucumber for instance: zero cucumber and all soy/corn/wheat. Interesting?


Mazuri tortoise diet:
Ground soybean hulls, ground corn, dehulled soybean meal, ground oats, wheat middlings, cane molasses, dehydrated alfalfa meal, wheat germ, dicalcium phosphate, soybean oil, brewers dried yeast, calcium carbonate, salt, dl-methionine, choline chloride, pyridoxine hydrochloride, d-alpha tocopheryl acetate (form of vitamin E), biotin, cholecalciferol, menadione sodium bisulfite complex (source of vitamin K), calcium pantothenate, vitamin A acetate, folic acid, riboflavin, preserved with mixed tocopherols, rosemary extract, nicotinic acid, vitamin B12 supplement, thiamine mononitrate, citric acid, l-lysine, manganous oxide, zinc oxide, ferrous carbonate, copper sulfate, zinc sulfate, calcium iodate, sodium selenite, cobalt carbonate.


Mazuri LS:
Ground Timothy Hay, Ground Soybean Hulls, Dehulled Soybean Meal, Dried Plain Beet Pulp, Oat Hulls, Wheat Middlings, Cane Molasses, Dried Apple Pomace, Ground Flaxseed, Carrageenan, Ground Oats, Rice Flour, Wheat Germ, Dicalcium Phosphate, Calcium Carbonate, Sucrose, Fructose, Artificial Flavors, Soybean Oil, Potassium Chloride, Brewers Dried Yeast, Salt, L-Lysine, Choline Chloride, DL-Methionine, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Dried Lactobacillus acidophilus Fermentation Product, Dried Lactobacillus casei Fermentation Product, d-Alpha Tocopheryl Acetate, Dried Bifidobacterium thermophilum Fermentation Product, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Dried Enterococcus faecium Fermentation Product, Biotin, Yucca schidigera Extract, Menadione Sodium Bisulfite Complex (source of Vitamin K), Calcium Pantothenate, Vitamin A Acetate, Folic Acid, Manganous Oxide, Riboflavin Supplement, Preserved with Mixed Tocopherols, Zinc Oxide, Ferrous Carbonate, Thiamine Mononitrate, Rosemary Extract, Carotene, Citric Acid (a Preservative), Vitamin B12 Supplement, Nicotinic Acid, Copper Sulfate, Zinc Sulfate, Calcium Iodate, Sodium Selenite Cobalt Carbonate.

I look at it like this.. pizza is not good for us but we eat it once and awhile. And has some good to it (all 4 food groups in one meal.. if u get the meat lovers) lol

 

[Kim&Tim]

UPDATE ON ZOOMED GRASSLAND DIET AND DESERT TORT TERRY TORTELLI:

FIRST DAY: soaked and offered alone (curious as to his initial reaction)... turned up his nose and walked away
SECOND DAY: soaked, crumbled and mixed a little in his leaf/etc salad... gobbled everything up
THIRD DAY: soaked, crumbled and mixed a lot more in his leaf/etc salad... gobbled everything up
FOURTH DAY: soaked enough to soften but still hold it’s shape and put chunks on top of his salad... gobbled chunks first
FIFTH DAY: just for fun, offered it alone again and he gobbled it up!

I'm really happy that he’ll eat it alone in a pinch, and/or as a supplement to his diet until I get his habitat filled with a bigger variety of tort-friendly plants to ensure he’s getting everything he needs. The diet smells WONDERFUL, has great ingredients with no added sugar or molasses or soy, and a lot of vitamins/etc that he might not otherwise get in captivity/out of the wild... I’M SOLD

Cool! I'm doing good too!

 

[lxsnmls]

Cool! I'm doing good too!

Hey, if it wasn't for your post, I wouldn't have even known there was a better diet out there than Mazuri... thanks!!